Linkedin Advertising: Directads is Now Open

LinkedIn who boasts having a community of well over 27 million users and growing, launched a beta version of their text ad serving platform called Directads. A self serving (like facebook), targeted cpm machine that has a built in pricing module that increases or decreases the cost per thousand impressions based on what criteria you choose.

Example - Add 3.00 per CPM to target your text ads by company size or $6.00 to target by seniority.

You can choose to advertise to the all of LinkedIn members in the United States or you can target specific members with up to 2 categories such as Company Size, Job Function, Industry, Seniority, Gender, Age, and Geography. It would awesome if you could do more then two categories but it would likely cost $150 per CPM.

Next you choose your budget. It can be anywhere from $25 - $2000. That’s right $25! Try a/b split testing on that budget.

LinkedIn currently has an audience of 27M+ professionals with an average household income of $109,000. Larger advertisers on Linkedin have been reporting $45 cpm’s while most social networks are barely getting $1.

LinkedIn has the right mojo. That why they chose to launch their own network rather then joining one. Publishers can join the Linkedin network which allows them to increase their inventory of impressions.

I’ve got some ads running as I blog so I will report back in a few weeks and give you a better look inside this CPM Advertising Machine.